PSN Community Spotlight – Converting a Non-Believer

Ah, Saturday. A day filled with bacon, cheesy eggs and the PSN Community Spotlight. For the unfamiliar, this is where PlayStation gamers tell their unique stories/experiences/thoughts, as submitted to this section in the PlayStation Community Forums. Those that make it all the way to PlayStation.Blog will receive a $50 PlayStation Store voucher.

We continued the trend of general PlayStation brand stories last week, and gamer Raraja wrote in to tell us about how he converted a student from a skeptic to a PlayStation fan.

Converting a Non-Believer

I have been a fan of PlayStation since Christmas day of 1996. I was a member of PlayStation Underground and G.A.P., so when I hear someone bad mouthing the PlayStation brand I take it personally. I also teach at an Alternative Education School for troubled middle school and high school teens. Usually the students have been arrested several times and expelled from school even more. When they are sent to our school it is their last chance of getting a high school diploma, and sadly most do not.

Last spring one of my students, whom I will call Jake, came into my classroom and heard some of his classmates talking about video games. Jake immediately started picking on them. Being the gamer that I am, I told Jake he’d better watch what he said because I played video games. Jake couldn’t believe it and asked me which system I played. I told him PS3 and he then told me that he heard the PS3 sucked. I laughed and told him I bet I could turn him into a gamer and even get him to buy a PS3.

Since our school isn’t a traditional school I asked my principal if I could bring my PS3 into the classroom and let the students play for the last ten minutes of class as a reward for participating in the first 30 minutes. Since we are always looking for ways to get the students to participate my principal said we could try it out for a week.

I went home that night and tried to figure out which games I could bring in to change Jake’s mind. I decided on Madden 12 and Uncharted.

On Monday when Jake came into class he was surprised that I had done what I said and brought my PS3 in. He made fun of it a little bit, but was actually participating in class. After 30 minutes of class I told them that they could play 10 minutes of the PS3. Because Jake was the reason the PS3 was in the classroom, he got to pick the game and could play first. He picked Uncharted.

Jake started playing and by the time the 10 minutes were up he had learned the basic controls. The next three days Jake and his classmates came to class and did their work so they could play Uncharted at the end of class. Unfortunately, on Friday of that first week there was a pretty bad argument over whose turn it was to play, and the principal told me no more PS3. I packed it up that day and figured I lost the bet I made with Jake.

Fast forward to this school year. Jake had to re-take my class, and as he walked in he said, “Yo, Mr. R you saved my life.” I laughed thinking he was joking, but quickly found out he wasn’t. He proceeded to tell me that after playing the PS3 in my classroom he had become addicted to Uncharted and got a summer job to save up and buy a PS3. He told me how he spent his whole summer working and playing Uncharted 1, 2 and 3.

I was trying to figure out how I “saved his life” when he told me how he had been out with his friends and decided he would rather play Uncharted 3. He went home early to play, and after he left, his friends got in a car accident and the seat where he had been sitting was smashed to the point where no one would have survived. Luckily, none of his friends were severely injured.

Jake truly believes that I saved his life that night by introducing him to the PS3 and Uncharted series. As a teacher, I thank you PlayStation and as a fan I say: LONG LIVE PLAY!

Thanks for writing in Raraja! Glad to hear Jake’s okay (and that you’re converting students into PlayStation fans).

Next week we want to hear stories about PlayStation-exclusive franchises. Click here to check out more info on this call to action.

13 Comments

There are other ways video games have saved lives (technically you saved him here), many teenagers are filled with stress and have thoughts of suicide, thankfully, stress can be relieved tremendously by video games.

raraja, thank you so much for sharing your beautiful story about Jake. How it ties in with the PlayStation brand really helps cleanup the terrible stereotype that games are bad. I haven’t experienced anything remotely as big, but some of the best moments in my life revolve around me, my brother, and my father playing games when I was young. Now that I’m a father, I want to share those kinds of experiences with my son as well. I think many people just aren’t aware of the possibility that games can truly bond us.

Now that’s one hell of a community spotlight! Major kudos to Raraja for being a teacher with the brass to handle the troubled ones and actually change lives for the better, and kudos to his school for allowing him to play in and outside the box. Game on!

Sony, if you want the PlayStation Vita you have to do what you should do and what consumers want from PlayStation Vita.

Ability to play out PlayStation 3/4 games on our PlayStation Vita whenever, wherever, with no need of an internet connection for either console, without having to have the disc on the PS3/4, without the PS3/4 having to be on and without having to purchase the game twice.

Exclusive PSVita games that can only be played on the PSVita and use features that only the PSVita has.

Digital copies of our Blu-ray/DVD movies.

Video game console and tablet hybrid with a dedicated app store.

Improved multitasking, example: using our browser no matter what we are doing, wether multiple things at once or multiple apps running in the background.

ps1 emulator not using the full vitas screen.
ps store not using the back touch pad scrolling
out of a hundred ps3 titles i found none with remote play (reason for buying the vita)
vitas game slot cover requires you to have finger nails as sharp as a razor blade to open it.
no tv adapter cable accessory so we can big screen the vita.